April is Stress Awareness Month. Stress isn’t always a bad thing, but when we have too much of it or we don’t know how to manage our stress, it can become overwhelming and take a toll on our mental health. At Cottonwood, in Tucson, Arizona, we offer holistic care that includes stress management techniques.
Where We Encounter Stress
There are many things that can impact what a person finds stressful, such as their stage of life, the level of support they have available, and what coping skills they already have. Some of the most common daily stressors people experience include:
- Work/school performance concerns
- Financial worries
- Relationship challenges
- Threats to safety
- Having too many competing obligations and too little time or energy to manage them all
In addition to these routine stressors, people may also encounter events that heighten their stress levels and make it harder to manage stressors they might otherwise navigate more easily:
- Sleep difficulties
- Poor nutrition
- Physical health issues
- Birth of a new baby
- Death of a loved one
- Divorce
- Moving
- Changing jobs/schools
Common Indicators of Stress
When people are struggling to manage stress in their lives, it can look like:
- Physical symptoms such as headaches, digestive issues, and feeling generally ill
- Emotional symptoms such as short temper, rigidity, anger, sadness, fearfulness, and frustration
- Behavioral symptoms such as increased substance use or changes in sleeping or eating patterns
Ways to Reduce Stress
If you recognize that you’re feeling stressed, the next step is to address it. There are many different techniques you can try, for example:
- H-A-L-T. Pause and ask yourself if you need to address one of your basic needs, which could be leading you to feel hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. You may feel better if you just take a few minutes to eat, address your anger, talk to someone, or rest.
- Take some deep breaths. Slow, deep, abdominal breathing is a great way to lower your stress level and get more oxygen to your brain, increasing your ability to problem-solve and make good decisions.
- Hype yourself up. Take a minute to focus on the ways you’re doing well. When we are stressed, we may have a tendency to focus on our perceived weaknesses and failures. Flip the script by reminding yourself of the talents and skills you do have and consider the possibility that the expectations you have for yourself could be too high. It may be helpful to consider more realistic expectations that don’t require perfection.
- W-A-I-T. This acronym stands for watch, accept, invite, and tell. A person who is practicing the W-A-I-T technique is watching for what triggers a stress reaction, accepting their stressors (but not acting on them), inviting themselves to relax by being compassionate with themselves, and telling their initial reaction that they can handle whatever is bothering them.
- Increase your self-care. Our culture can sometimes condition us to put ourselves last, to be selfless. Unfortunately, this can leave us exhausted and cause us to be less effective in doing the things we want to do for everyone else. Prioritizing a healthy diet, plenty of sleep, consistent exercise, and personal time for a soak in the tub, a massage, reading, your favorite sport, or whatever recharges your batteries, can make it easier to handle everything else.
- Meditation. There are many different types of meditation. Books and free online videos are a great way to learn meditation techniques you can use whenever you’re feeling stressed.
- Take a break from the news. We are living in tumultuous times, where there are daily reports of difficult things going on in the world around us. It may be helpful to limit how much time you spend watching or reading the news if you find that it is adding to your stress levels.
Identifying Stressors on the Horizon
If you know that a stressful event will be occurring in your life, you can take steps to make it more manageable:
- Meal prep, so that you have healthy food readily available and don’t have to worry about cooking, on top of whatever else is going on.
- Do parts of the stressful task in advance, so that there is less to accomplish during a time crunch.
- Schedule time off from work, before, during, or after the anticipated stressful event.
- Build in time for breaks. You don’t have to wait until you’re already hungry, angry, lonely, or tired to “deserve” a break. You are allowed to plan for time with your pet, a snack, a chat with a loved one, or a meditation session in your schedule.
- Don’t procrastinate. When we know something is going to be stressful, it’s natural to try to avoid it, but waiting to the last minute can reduce your choices, make it harder to get things done, and make you more stressed overall.
At Cottonwood, we believe in treating the whole person by recognizing their mental, emotional, physical, social, and spiritual needs. Stress management is a small but important part of what we offer.
